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Poem by Susan Deer Cloud

It inspires me to write, but I must go to work so I can feed my kids.I think I will sit in my truck and write in my journal when I get to the jobsite.

--Ed

January morning. We are emailing, sharing poemson Sacred Worldwide Web. You tell me a poem of minehas inspired you to write, but you must go to work so youcan feed your kids. Suddenly, I am one of your kids. I amback in Catskills, same age as your son, Trin. I am that girlpadding softly out into kitchen dawn, watching her fatherbrew Eight o' Clock coffee in aluminum drip pot. Shebreathes in steamy equatorial fragrance that one daywill be the bittersweet smell of nostalgia. They sitat Formica table. He sips coffee. Winter lightfollows his hand lifting a cup won at summer's carnival.They have epicanthic eyes, live in America but peerinto each other from Asia. How to explain? It is whythey say nothing, don't have to. They speakone word, "Goodbye." He trudges out kitchen doorin work clothes washed to translucence, swings blacklunch box like a fist for the endless day to come.

Only years later will that girl find her father's poemsin a shoebox once holding a Christmas gift of work shoes.Poems from the War, poems addressed to her mother,his Indian princess, and to their unborn first son –poems that understood the terrible love a person haswhen he might return to his beloved in a closedcoffin draped with an impotent flag. Poems smellingfaintly of new shoes wishing the feet in them wouldnever have to grow too tired. Poems dreamingthey could dance and not have their backs bowedby long hours of work plus overtime. When you joke,"Fuck working, lol," I am your daughter hearingthat revolution in your face that hides so much from me.But we share green eyes, know the interior emerald forestsof each other and those wilds of rhyme we yearn to sing in.

January night. You email me Jpegs of Trinsliding down the laughing snow of high pitchedroof, enraptured in his taboo act. Yes, I am oneof your kids. I am that child whose father leaveshis poetry behind so she can fly down the steepsof life. So he can feed all his children the stars.